DreamHost Warrant: DOJ Seeks 'Criminal Acts' In Anti-Trump Website Investigation

After issuing a wide-ranging warrant demanding information about visitors to a website designed to organize protests during Donald Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. Department of Justice has narrowed the scope of its request, focusing primarily on “criminal acts.”

The Department of Justice modified the warrant after receiving push back from web hosting service DreamHost—the company that is home to disruptj20.org, the website in the government’s crosshairs—for the initial, onerous request.

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On July 12, a search warrant was issued by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia that required DreamHost disclose a significant amount of information stored on the company’ servers from disruptj20.org, a website run by a group of activists who were attempting to build “the framework needed for mass protests to shut down the inauguration of Donald Trump” and planning “widespread direct actions to make that happen.”

The warrant included a request for all files associated with the site, email accounts the contents of those accounts associated with the site and contact and billing information of the person who registered the site.

The warrant also demanded DreamHost disclose any information it had about people who simply visited the website. The Justice Department asked for the IP addresses of visitors, which would generally provides information about a visitor’s location and other potentially identifiable information, as well as contact information of people who used the site. The request would have included information on more than 1.3 million people.

According to the Department of Justice, it never intended to request as much information as it did and had always been exclusively interested in tracking down those it believed may have been involved in violent or criminal acts.

“the Affidavit, the indictment that was returned by a Grand Jury, and the government's repeated statements made during public hearings in the pending criminal cases make clear that the government is focused on the criminal acts of defendants and their co-conspirators, and not their political views - and certainly not the lawful activities of peaceful protesters,” the latest filing from the Department of Justice said.

“Similarly, the government is focused on the use of the Website to organize, to plan, and to effect a criminal act - that is, a riot. The government has no interest in seizing data from the Website that does not relate to this limited purpose.”

Under the newly narrowed scope of the Department of Justice’s warrant, the agency will no longer require DreamHost to disclose unpublished media that was stored but never made public. It also is no longer requesting HTTP access or error logs, which means the IP addresses of visitors to the site will no longer be included.

DreamHost posted a blog post in which it called the narrowed scope of the warrant a “huge win for internet privacy.” The company said “we absolutely appreciate the DOJ’s willingness to look at and reconsider both the scope and the depth of their original request for records. That’s all we asked them to do in the first place, honestly.”

DreamHost said it still had some issues with the request from the Department of Justice and the hosting company plans to move forward with a filing mean to address the First and Fourth Amendment issues raised by the warrant. A hearing for that filing is scheduled for Thursday.